Special planning program for district South-116 in the City of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville

To promote the sustainable development of its last available development sector, the City of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville is planning to develop a special planning program (SPP) for district South-116. The City of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville retained the services of the public interest organization Vivre en Ville for this project and will apply the principles and guidelines set out in the document “Vers une charte des écoquartiers”. This document, created by Vivre en Ville, describes the process for developing an ecodistrict in the Quebec context using various North American and European community models. The goal of the project is to develop a complete community on the basis of various criteria including: the densification of undeveloped land; the notion of mixed uses; the use of active transportation and public transit; the construction of sustainable and energy-efficient buildings; the integration of urban agriculture; the integrated management of residual materials; and the protection and enhancement of natural environments. The work undertaken as part of this project will be aligned with the Communauté Métropolitaine de Montréal’s Metropolitan Land Use and Development Plan as well as Longueil's Land Use and Development Plan. As part of the initial steps in the project, a steering committee consisting of the city's urban planning managers, Vivre en Ville representatives, elected officials, landowners as well as citizen representatives will be put in place to provide advice on project implementation, diagnostics, vision, directions and objectives, in addition to the development concept and its implementation. The vision for the development of the target sector will also be presented and discussed as part of a strategic visioning exercise where local residents will be invited to participate in a citizen's forum. Once complete, the SPP development process for district South-116 will be an ecodistrict planning experience applied to an area under development as an extension to the built environment in the Montreal region. The experience will help evaluate the application of a sustainable development model to this type of environment and highlight the benefits, drawbacks as well as any limitations. In addition, integrating an urban agriculture component is an innovative approach that could apply to a number of areas in the Montreal region. (Project description from original funding application)